Posts tagged “airplay”

Mon Oct 12th: am playing a live session for Pete Jones on Radio Reverb 97.2FM tonight, which can be heard on the wireless or streamed live here. It goes out from 6-8PM, with a repeat on Friday at noon (see above). I’ll be doing songs old & new, and probably chatting a bit.

Something different… In a week’s time I’m back on Nigel Staley’s programme Under The Table onBrighton & Hove Community Radio, Thursday 27th June, 6 – 7pm. (Not bad going, considering the last occasion was only a couple of months back.) This time I’ll be performing eight spoken word pieces, with ambient interludes from Susumu Yokota’s album The Boy and the Tree. The pieces will include three extracts from this novel, Leland Poet – which I’m re-releasing onto Kindle the following week, on Monday 1st July.

It’s quite a step away from strumming guitar, but there’s many hooks to grip you with.

So… live session on Thursday (25th) went well – Under The Table on BHCR. Despite technical problems at the start of the show cutting into the timeslot (handled with aplomb by presenter Nigel Staley… truly, the man’s unflappable), it was a good programme and a buzz to perform on. The time issue meant I didn’t get to play a couple of pre-recorded tracks – from Glow in the Dark – but did manage to fit in:

…Plus live versions of Wet Dream Disaster, Face of Stone & Larkin. I got these recorded, and will no doubt find a use for em soon. A freebie, perhaps. Did a spoken word piece and talked a load of shit about nudist beaches in Brighton, John Peel’s disembodied essence, that kind of thing, and selected tracks by Lou Reed (Waves of Fear) and The Fall (Ladybird).

Yeah, tech issues aside it was pretty sweet to have almost a whole programme to play with. Other than that, I’ve been offered a local gig – details very soon – and am hatching schemes and plans enormousfold.

Well, that was a… colourful year. And who could ask for more? Rather that than the alternative, which is a dreary thought. Death!

So what happened? (I’m still asking myself that, so this summary is as much for my benefit as anything else.)

1) Released 2nd album. Got more, and better, reviews than #1 – which was kind of the idea.

2) Did a brief and eventful tour after release – pretty much broke even: another first. Played a fair few other gigs, mostly solo, some with…

3) A band, which orbited around the songs for roughly 8-9 months and then exploded. With hindsight, it was never going to last, but during that time we played…

4) Live on BBC Introducing: The South (and the single got a little air-time too). This was exciting.

5) Did some more on the writing front, including an anthology on Kindle. My shady publication history can be partially untangled here, for anyone who’s into the minutiae.

…Besides these bare bullet-points, I’ve just kept on doing it, “it” being more songs. Met some potential collaborators in the last couple of months, had a few tantalising overtures; again, I’m not going into detail yet for fear of The Jinx; in this game, so many promising set-ups tend to evaporate without warning.

But it’s promising just the same. And it’s been a blast – on a gross venal level, the trickle of royalties makes filling in an income tax Self Assessment form such a thrill.

Joking aside, I’m still fuelling off the highs and regret none of the lows – hope you (whoever you are) likewise. Happy New Year.

That was fun. Played three songs live and read a short story, on BHCR‘s Under The Table programme, Thur eve. The songs were Into It, Love Unknown and Clumsy – album versions here – and the story was Complaint from the Other World, recently re-published by Ether Books.

You know how obscure old horror/ghost story writers have that one tale that crops up again and again in paperback collections…? Hubristic as it sounds, I reckon this story’s mine, in a shit internet sort of way.

Which isn’t to say ambition doesn’t still gravel my arse. To do better in writing, but more immediately in music. Thankfully, that part went smooth as an adrenaline icecream, and hopefully I’ll have some recordings as evidence soon.

Thanks to Nigel & Pierce – and btw, James Herbert has oddly sketchy handwriting (his was the previous entry in the guestbook)…

Thanks, as always, are in order. The song was recorded live at Rooz Studios, nr Old St in London, as part of an EP/album thing (it’s complicated). I’m told it was available in shops, back when that sort of thing mattered. Anyway, it’s a blast from the recent-ish past; my principles are unswerved, my delusions intact. If nothing else, it’s a nice fit with Hawkwind and The Fall.

The BBC Introducing: South live session we played is up on their site for the next 5 days, here.

We’ll get a recording of our songs, which were spread out across the broadcast, so I’ll probably upload it here &/or to Soundcloud at some point… Till then, check out the programme. It includes an interview, which I think went okay – the top of my head was spinning off somewhere in the upper atmosphere at the time. Managed not to swear or otherwise disgrace myself – can recall that much.

In all, sounded nice and crunchy; in fact we were ear-splittingly loud. No idea how the sound engineer made sense of this tidal sheet of fuzz, but what went on-air was magicked into something very tight and coherent, more so as we progressed. The fact we were lean, ready and up for it must’ve helped too.

Abiding memory? How swift and efficient the whole operation was – totally hassle-free, nice people to deal with – and, uh, playing with a big cardboard cut-out of Beloved National Treasure (and in my book, twat) David Jason as Del Boy, right in my eyeline. That and the chundering monotony of football, everywhere, inescapable.

No, seriously though: it was a pleasure. Had thought I was shackled to the acoustic guitar forevermore… Happily, I was wrong.

New: looks like I’ve finally got a band together, at least the strong framework of one. All we lack – perhaps – is a keyboard or synth (or even laptop) player. It’s sounding great so far… Exciting stuff.

Also, been getting some more airplay on Brighton’s Burst Radio – check em out.

Old: my former band Empty Vessels now has a Youtube channel here. There’s live footage in 3 parts, and also loads of free audio on Bandcamp. While I don’t want to make the mistake of raking around in the past too much, it captures the chaos and focused energy of those days – just as well I’ve got a new band, really.

(In fact, I was disentangling myself from some internet admin guff and very nearly missed my own song. Was in that mix of frantic busy-ness and frustrated inertia that only technology can create – watching lots of coloured bars creeping toward fulfilment, only to be thwarted by tiny circles and error messages… I shudder thinking about it.)

Anyway, all’s well that ends well. The whole programme was great – if you didn’t get a chance to hear it on broadcast, give it a listen on iPlayer.